The number and variety of computing devices used on, or with, privately-owned local area networks are rapidly growing. Along with computers and notebooks, smartphones, tablets and various other devices are used. Each device has a built-in data storage medium, and oftentimes can also support removable information storage media. In the present context, information storage media are referred to as drives. Drives can be connected to various computers and used for storing and transferring information. Almost every drive used within a corporate or other private computer network has confidential data which must be protected from being accessed outside of the network.
Ensuring protection of data when using drives is a task with many challenges and implications. In general, network administrators determine appropriate security policies for a drive or for a group of drives, to monitor the usage, to save the ownership history, to have the possibility to assign security policies for a device, and the like. Security policies can contain device access policies and encryption policies. Security policies can be assigned depending on various drive use criteria; for example, depending on who the owner is (i.e., to whom the drive was provided), in what network segment the drive is used, on what computers the drive is used, or what the drive type may be.
To date, a practical and comprehensive solution has not been proposed to secure portable drives in particular, which can be in the hands of different users and moved about within the network, and even outside of the network.